PHYSIOGNOMY

Physiognomists
believed that a person’s character could be ascertained from external
appearance.In their view,
the entire body can be “read” for information about character. Later theorists
in this exhibit built upon the idea that the external reflects the internal.
John Caspar Lavater was a Swiss physiognomist whose writings were, as
he himself put it,“designed
to promote the knowledge and the love of mankind.” The five volume set
was translated from the French by Henry Hunter and illustrated with engravings
made by or under Thomas Holloway.

John
Caspar LavaterEssays on Physiognomy
Five Volumes
London, 1789-98
Syracuse University Library, Department of Special Collections

PHRENOLOGY:
ca. 1800-1870

Phrenologists
taught that the brain consists of many separate “faculties,” each governing
an aspect of human behavior. They believed that criminal behavior is a
result of the over-development of some faculties, such as combativeness
and destructiveness, and the under-development of others, such as benevolence
and conscientiousness.

Phrenology
contributed powerfully to nineteenth-century thinking about criminality
as a mental illness.Championed most strongly by physicians, phrenology encouraged
articulation of the so-called medical model of criminality, which interprets
criminal behavior as a sickness and hence properly part of medicine’s
jurisdiction.Phrenology
supported the belief that criminals, because sick, are not responsible
for their behavior, a belief that became the basis for the legal defense
of insanity.Additionally,
phrenology provided a biological (and sometimes hereditarian) explanation
for crime.

Some
of this exhibit’s most appealing artifacts come from the history of phrenology.
They reflect the humanity inherent in the phrenologists’ ideas, which
included an optimistic vision of the possibility for people to change
by choosing to live in healthful and moral ways.

Phrenological
ideas strongly influenced 19th-century American art, and one can perhaps
see the exhibit’s examples of phrenological heads as works of art in themselves.

Rationale
of Crime, and its Appropriate Treatment; Being a Treatise on Criminal
Jurisprudence Considered in Relations to Cerebral Organization. Marmaduke B. Sampson.New York: D. Appleton & Company; 1846.From the 2nd London Edition, with notes and illustrations of E[lizabeth]
W. Farnham, Matron of Mount Pleasant State Prison.
Collection of the University Libraries, University at Albany

Phrenological Head with
Fowlers and Wells Readings (paper strip), nd.
Plaster.6 x 11 1/4
x 7 inches
Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History

The
Mastin Murals

A series of panoramic murals
by unidentified artists commissioned by George Mastin, a traveling “Bible
Spiritualist.”The murals
draw on principles of phrenology.
Collection of New York State Historical Association, Farmers’ Museum,
Inc., Cooperstown, New York

The phrenological view that people can induce criminal behavior
through excessive eating, drinking, and sexual activity led directly to
degeneration theory, the next stage in the development of biological theories
of crime.According to degeneration
theorists, social problems are interchangeable. Physical defects, mental
and physical diseases, poverty, crime, and delinquency are simply signs
of an underlying problem – degeneration. Thus the 1880 census included
statistics on the “defective, dependent, and delinquent classes” in a
single volume.

According
to degeneration theorists, self-abuse and excess lead to degeneration,
a weakened physical condition that in turn weakens one’s moral capacity
and thus leads to crime and other social problems.However (these theorists continued), by obeying the laws of good
health and morality, even degenerates can reverse their downward slide
and begin to regenerate physically and ethically.

In
other words, degenerationists did not view inheritance as fixed and immutable.They put forth a biological and hereditarian theory of crime, yet
they believed that people can reverse the course of bad heredity.Like phrenology, degenerationism too was an optimistic doctrine.

“The
Jukes”: A Study in Crime, Pauperism, Disease and Heredity.Richard L. Dugdale.New
York:Putnam’s, 1877.
Collection of New York Academy of Medicine

The Jukes: A Study in
Crime, Pauperism, Disease and Heredity.Robert [sic; Richard] L. Dugdale.4th ed. Reprint, New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, Knickerbocker
Press, 1910.With a forward
by Elisha Harris, M.D., and an introduction by Franklin H. Giddings.
Collection of the University Libraries, University at Albany

Health and Character
With Directions for Their Improvement.Joseph Sims. New York: D.M. Bennett, 1879
Collection of New York Academy of Medicine

Prisoners and Paupers:
A Study of the Abnormal Increase of Criminals, and the Public Burden of
Pauperism in the United States; The Causes and Remedies.Henry M. Boies.New York: Knickerbocker Press; 1893.
Collection of the University Libraries, University at Albany

The Diseases of Society(The Vice and Crime Problem).G. Frank Lydston.Philadelphia,
PA: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1904.
Collection of New York Academy of Medicine

The Diseases of Society
(The Vice and Crime Problem), G. Frank Lydston.Philadelphia, PA: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1904.
Collection of the University Libraries, University at Albany

CRIMINAL ANTHROPOLOGY: CA 1880-1910

In
the late nineteenth century, Cesare Lombroso, an Italian psychiatrist,
put forth a new biological theory of crime: criminal anthropology. According
to Lombroso’s book Criminal Man, some offenders are “born” criminals,
primitive creatures who can be recognized by their physical and mental
abnormalities.

This
message was much more pessimistic than that of earlier biological theories
of crime.Criminal anthropologists
taught that some criminals are unchangeable, doomed to lives of crime.Born criminals form a distinct criminal type with twisted bodies,
minds, and morals.Low-browed, long-armed, and apelike in appearance, they are
in fact throwbacks to an earlier phase of evolution, primitives who
are incapable of conforming to the laws of civilized societies.

Anatomical Studies on
the Brains of Criminals.MoritzBenedikt.Translated from the German by E.P. Fowler.New York: Wood and Company, 1881.
Collection of New York Academy of Medicine

Anatomical Studies Upon
the Brains of Criminals:
A Contribution to Anthropology, Medicine, Jurisprudence, and Psychology.
Moritz Benedikt, orig. 1881; repr. ed. 1981. With
an introduction by Robert W. Rieber and Heidi Gundlach.New York: DaCapo Press.
Collection of the University Libraries, University at Albany

Criminology.Arthur MacDonald.Orig. 1893; repr. New York: AMS Press, 1973.With an introduction by Dr. Cesare Lombroso.
Collection of the University Libraries, University at Albany

The Criminal.Havelock Ellis; London: Walter Scott, Ltd.;2nd ed. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1900
Collection of the University Libraries, University at Albany

Anthropometric Devices for
Measuring the Skull, nd.
Collection of the Mütter Museum, College of Physicians of Philadelphia

Skull of Mirju Aslan. Romanian
child-murderer, executed, age 18.
Collection of the Mütter Museum, College of Physicians of Philadelphia.Purchased from Prof. Joseph Hrytl, 1874.

Alphonse Bertillon’s
Instructions for Taking Descriptions for the Identification of Criminals
and Others by Means of Anthropomorphic Indications.Translated from the original French work by Alphonse Bertillon.Gallus Muller, translator.Orig. 1889; reprinted New York: AMS Press, 1977.
Collection of the University Libraries, University at Albany

FEEBLEMINDEDNESS
THEORY: ca. 1905-1920 AND BEYOND

Degeneration
theory and criminal anthropology converged to convince policymakers
and members of the general public of the need for eugenic policies that
would prevent socially undesirable people from reproducing.Eugenic concepts had been advocated for centuries, but they did
not become the basis for an organized social movement until after 1883,
when the Englishman Sir Francis Galton coined the term eugenics
to refer to “the science of improving [human] stock” through selective
mating.

By
the end of the nineteenth-century, policymakers were calling for sterilization
or lifetime institutionalization of “born” criminals to prevent their
reproduction.But by this
time it was clear that many criminals did not exhibit the physical abnormalities
predicted by criminal anthropology.The problem became one of finding a simple and sure method
of distinguishing “born” criminals from offenders who merely fell into
crime through circumstance.

The
introduction of mental testing in the twentieth century led to both
a new means of identifying “born” criminals and a new biological theory
of crime, according to which criminals are “feebleminded” or mentally
weak. One result of this theory was a rapid expansion of the system
of training schools for the feebleminded and their transformation into
custodial institutions where people with mental retardation could be
held for life.Another
result was the enactment in several states of “defective delinquent”
laws that enabled authorities to hold accused and convicted offenders
who seemed feebleminded for up-to-life terms.

The English Convict:
A Statistical Study.Charles
Goring.London: Wyman
and Sons, 1913.
Collection of New York Academy of Medicine

The Criminal Imbecile:
An Analysis of Three Remarkable Murder Cases. Henry Herbert Goddard.New York: Macmillan, 1915.
Collection of the University Libraries, University at Albany

Five Hundred Delinquent
Women.Sheldon Glueck
and Eleanor T. Glueck.New
York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1934.
Collection of the University Libraries, University at Albany

The Bell Curve: Intelligence
and Class Structure in American Life. Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray.New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994.
Collection of the University Libraries, University at Albany

MULTIPLE
AND DIVERSE BIOLOGICAL THEORIES: CA. 1930-2000

Since
the heyday of feeblemindedness theory, scientists have proposed a range
of biological explanations of crime, some incorporating themes of the
past, others striking out in new directions.

The New Criminology:
A Consideration of the Chemical Causation of Abnormal Behavior.Max Schlapp and Edward Smith.New York: Boni & Liveright, 1928.
Collection of New York Academy of Medicine

The New Criminology:
A Consideration of the Chemical Causation of Abnormal Behavior. Max Schlapp and Edward Smith.New York: Boni & Liveright, 1928.
Collection of the University Libraries, University at Albany

Anthropometry Set in canvas
case,Germany, 1925-1949
Collection of the National Museum of Health and Medicine, Armed Forces
Institute of Pathology

Compass Style Spreading
Calipers in Leatherette Case, Switzerland, 1925-1949
Collection of the National Museum of Health and Medicine, Armed Forces
Institute of Pathology

Steel Compass Style Calipers,
Anthropometry, date and country of origin unknown
Collection of the National Museum of Health and Medicine, Armed Forces
Institute of Pathology

Crime and the Man.Earnest Hooton.Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1939.
Collection of New York Academy of Medicine

Varieties of Delinquent
Youth: An Introduction to Constitutional Psychiatry. William H. Sheldon, with the Collaboration of Emil M. Hartl
and Eugene McDermott.New
York: Harper & Brothers Publishers,1949.
Collection of the University Libraries, University at Albany

Physique and Delinquency.
Sheldon Glueck and Eleanor Glueck. New York: Kraus Reprint Corporation,
1956.Reprint New York:
Harper, 1965.
Collection of the University Libraries, University at Albany

Crime and Human Nature.James Q. Wilson and Richard J. Herrnstein.New York: Simon & Schuster, 1985.
Collection of the University Libraries, University at Albany

The
new image of heredity

Model of Double Helix
Mixed media
Collection of the Department of Biological Sciences, University at Albany,
SUNY

The
Mastin Murals

CONCLUSION

The
question of what factors are responsible for people who seem to be criminalistic
from birth or an early age has intrigued thinkers for thousands of years.
Ultimately, it is a question about the origins of evil. There are three
ways to answer it.

One
answer is religious: according to some theologians, God predestines
certain people to sin.

A
second type of answer is biological: Since about 1800, scientists
have contended that in some cases biological defects determine who
will commit crimes.

The
third type of answer is definitional: according to such explanations,
no matter what the theological or biological circumstances may be,
born criminals are produced through social processes and do not
– in fact cannot – exist independent of them.

This
exhibit has focused on theories that give the second type of answer.The exhibit itself grows out of the third approach, which stresses
the social processes involved in the creation of “born” criminals.